On the Night of the Fire

Debate and confusion will always exist about when film noir starts and finishes, or if it should only appertain to one country. Importantly it will always be in the eye of the beholder, more so since many of the film makers back in the day didn't know they were making films that would soon become a film making style phenomenon.

On the Night of the Fire (AKA: The Fugitive) has everything a film noir lover could want. Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and adapted from F.L. Green's novel of the same name, film stars Ralph Richardson, Diana Wynyard, Romney Brent, Mary Clare and Henry Oscar. Plot has Richardson as Will Kobling, a Tyneside barber in the North East of England, who after spying an open window at the local mill, lets temptation get the better of him and climbs in to steal the money that will hopefully end his family's financial woes. On such impulsive decisions does life alter...

From the off the pic is exuding a period of working class Britain from days of yore! It's all brickwork and cobbled streets, of musky docks, gin houses, beat street coppers and sweat stained barber shops where graft and honest toil is the order of the day. Magnificently hovering over proceedings is a swirling score by Miklós Rózsa (Double Indemnity/Criss Cross) and Germanic cinematography by Günther Krampf (Pandora's Box/The Ghoul), with these in full effect and director Hurst firmly dealing in a mood of pessimism, this really becomes a picture not complying with any sort of code ethics.

The characterisations are superbly dubious, story is awash with folk who are quick to turn on a sixpence to meet their ends. There's hysterical alcoholics, shifty loners, a business man who is not beyond expecting sexual favours to pay off a debt. Added into the pot is murder, blackmail and the corruption of someone we could quite easily sympathise with, all this and the fire that smoothers the town in smog, water and floating burnt cinders. The backdrop is set in noirish stone, Richardson is superb, and then the devilish hand of noir fate steps in to not cheat lovers of the film making medium.

A bit stagy at times and the likes of Mary Clare are too hysterical with their acting - where the director should have reined it in - but small complaints for anyone interested in British Proto-Noir before it even had a name. 8/10

Ralph Richardson stars with Dana Wynyard in this 1939 film, "On the Night of the Fire."

Richardson plays a barber, Will Kobling, who walks by an open window, sees some money on a desk and steals it.

His wife, in an attempt to keep up with her wealthy sister, winds up owing money to a local merchant. He is somewhat of a loan shark, but when Kit pays him with stolen money, the police become suspicious due to numbers on the bills.

This leads to a great deal of tragedy, with Kobling wanted for murder and ultimately going into hiding.

Ralph Richardson was such a magnificent actor that a good deal of this film is done in silence. It is enormously effective. On the set of The Heiress, Montgomery Clift complained that Richardson never made a mistake.

Despite all his transgressions, we are sympathetic toward Kobling and his wife, Wynyard giving a beautiful performance.

Definitely worth seeing especially for the performances.

I am not a specialist of British films from the thirties and forties, but this one, which I discovered at the French Cinémathèque in 1988, amazed me so much. It is a drama, truly tragic thriller drama starring a terrific Ralph Richardson, grabs you, holds you from the beginning till the end. I have always thought that Ralph Richardson had the same face as Michel Serrault, the French actor, who would also had been excellent in this kind of character. The scheme looks like a James Hadley Chase's novel with a lead desperate character who looks like you and me, and who slowly but surely becomes a murderer, because of his mone issues and a blackmailer. A greedy blackmailer. The tooic where audiences can't prevent to become full of empathy for the mai character, no matter what he does to survive. Outstanding British crime flick. By the way, speaking of British masterpieces fromt he forties, what a gem THE WICKED LADY, the Leslie Arliss's film, starring Margaret Lockwood in a kind of Gene Tierney in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN.

A film well worth watching similar in some ways to Odd Man Out about a man on the run and the working class life of a British city but without Carol Reed's cinematic flair. The acting was impressive, especially by Sir Ralph ,Diana Wynyard and Henry Oscar. And by the way the film was made for 1939 audiences not those in 2020.

In 1930s Newcastle, if you worked in a bank, you could leave money unattended in an empty room and leave the window open. This was especially a good thing to do in a poor working-class area near the docks. We seem to have developed our ideas since then. Anyway, for this film, barber Ralph Richardson (Will) comes across this scenario and decides to go for it and pinch the money just sitting there inviting his attention. Well, he is now £100.00 richer. Nice one.

However, what is he going to do with his new wealth? Oh no, his wife Diana Wynyard (Kit) has got herself into debt by owing the local tailor Henry Oscar (Pillinger) for outfits so she can keep up appearances. She is being pressured for payment of debts and this is where the bulk of Richardson's wealth is absorbed. Typical - just when he was planning a happy life for his family, a woman has ruined it!

Thanks to a money laundering trail, the police put a watch on Oscar's movements which leads to bribery and murder.

The film is a character study of how things can go terribly wrong so easily for what is essentially a good man - Ralph Richardson. This is about his descent. The film has a good setting and story although it does occasionally drag in the 2nd half. It also contains a terribly over-the-top performance of a screaming woman that looks like Miriam Margolyes. Definitely a relative. We also get a young barber's apprentice who features quite prominently in the story and doesn't even get a mention in the credits. How unfair is that! He also has a strong cockney accent and taken with the other accents in the film, you would assume that this is set in London. Nope. It's Newcastle. Obviously before the Geordie accent was invented for the purposes of Reality TV shows.